| 2007-02-09 21:11:26 756 Tonight I had the best meal ever in the great metropolis of Starkville. Emily and I met Joel and Jennifer at the Oktoc Grill that is right behind Up Your Alley right off of University across from Bin 612. Turns out that the format is a nice four course pick your soup and entrée deal. Joel and I both went for the crab bisque and the fillet of beef entrée. Jennifer went for the halibut, Emily got the stuffed chicken, and they both got the butter bean bisque. So things started off with the bisque. Then was a great salad of lettuce that even Emily could eat with a great vinaigrette. The entrées came up next. Joel and I won with our beef. This was the best piece of meat I have ever eaten. Was wonderful with asparagus, rice pilaf, and carrots. The dessert was caramel over ice cream. Best restaurant in Starkville. It it totally the antithesis of the Abbey having great service and great food. The only bad thing is that you should be prepared to part with a C-note. But it is so worth it. | ||||
| 2007-02-08 11:05:30 755 Back when I lived on Yellow Jacket with Bryan, it was referred to as the apartments behind the mini-storage. I am glad that I am out of there now since the mini-storage caught on fire. | ||||
| 2007-02-07 20:57:21 754 Go go gadget stock market! The IRA is up 4% on the year already. TRGMX, TRSPX, and TCLOX are the best. Until of course the Democrats do something dumb and the economy tanks. Kevin finally got a website up. | ||||
| 2007-02-03 15:56:23 753 Ran forever this afternoon with Kevin. A week from tomorrow is the Mercedes Marathon. Brings the yearly total of running miles to 41.4, twenty-one days of biking to work, and a total of 242 miles of commuting. Poor Emily is at work today. At least she had a decent enough this past week as she started on the 7-3 shift. Much better than the 3-11 that she had been on for months. The hospital is so short on nurses that Emily worked a 40+ hour week and is working a 12 hour shift today. Yay for money! Boo for being at work... | ||||
| 2007-02-01 22:35:22 752 Kevin and I ran a whole eight miles a week ago. We ran a small run of four on this Tuesday. Now the big run comes up tomorrow when we will go for eleven. A week and two days from the half marathon. I am going to hurt. A lot. Today's commute was a load of fun. It was raining this morning and so freaking cold, so I wore all of my usual layers for 30 degrees plus my old Adidas pants on top of my work pants. It actually worked and was pretty much waterproof. | ||||
| 2007-02-01 22:22:35 751 Thank you Rick Frazier for the marriage advice, "Dude you are going to get fat." Sorry Rick, I guess you did not know me when I was a freshman weighing a mere 180. Now that I am 25 and weigh 220something due to the influence of cheap beer, I do not think I will get much bigger. Since I spend an hour on my bike a day commuting, and can manage a six mile run in slow ass nine minute miles, I am not worried about my waist size getting any larger. If I would cut down my daily intake by 500 calories, I would shrivel into nothing in a few months. Anyway it does not matter. If I start to approach 200, I will start eating pure lard to keep my weight at 201 to stay at Clydestale status at the Memphis in May triathlon. MSU almost beat the #1 team in the nation!!!! Florida is some damned cheaters! | ||||
| 2007-02-01 22:19:46 750 Usually I do not care for the driving habits of the Starkville Police as they like to pass me a wee bit close when I am on my bike. Or maybe it is just the one jackass who drives the SPD Jeep Cherokee (in the middle of this nice banner) who passes me with inches to spare regularly on Montgomery Street. So anyway today I ended up with another police officer behind me at the intersection of Montgomery and Chapin. He was a good driver and actually got over to the left to pass me. I really appreciate people who do that. He even came to a complete stop at the Montgomery / Critz intersection, something the Jeep driving ass never does. It got better though, at the bottom of the big hill he turned his lights on and caught a speeder going south. First time I have ac tually seen someone pulled over on Montgomery since I moved into my apartment last July. | ||||
| 2007-01-23 20:21:17 749 Wal-Mart and Target are selling porn from their websites. | ||||
| 2007-01-22 21:27:22 748 21 miles on the bike today. | ||||
| 2007-01-19 10:56:59 747 States I have visited:  create your own personalized map of the USA Been to a few more states since 2004. All three new ones were from Phi Mu Alpha travel :) | ||||
| 2007-01-19 00:12:26 746 Thank you el Democrats for making your crazy rules. Since I only have 499.2 readers, I do not have to bow to your oppressive guidelines. Plus I am not lobbying anyone but to tell them that the Abbey in Starkville is a terrible place to go eat. | ||||
| 2007-01-16 16:56:59 745 Space Ghost sold out. Again. To esurance. Wah. | ||||
| 2007-01-16 15:51:57 744 This weekend rocked. Sesti and I left Starkville around 3PM on Saturday and headed to the Delta. We met up with the Garraway and Jeremy Evans at the Hampton. Met up with Mark Helmstetter and Tyler Findley at the Airport Grocery for supper. It was good enough even though the service was super slow. If I ever have to go back to Cleveland again, I hope we can go to the Pickled Okra. Afterward the four of us went back to the Hampton and hung out for a while. Got up on Sunday and had lunch at Subway. From there we went to Delta State and started the province workshop. The schedule was awesome due to the fact that Garraway and I had planned it on Christmas day. The guys from Delta State cooked us some awesome hamburgers for supper. After the days sessions at about 10PM, Garraway, Sesti, Jeremy, and I went to Wal-Mart (the most terrible store in the world, but when you are in Cleveland...) and bought junk food. Sunday's sessions were also pretty productive. We got done about noon. Sesti and I hit a McDonald's drive through for lunch and headed toward Starkvegas. Garraway and Jeremy had left early so that Jeremy could catch his plane in Jackson. Even so, we all managed to be crossing the Yazoo river at the same time. I made it home just in time to have 10 minutes with Emily before she had to go to work. Emily spent so much time cleaning up the apartment this weekend while I was gone. I was exhausted on Monday when I got back and only cleaned up a little. I cleaned up the upstairs bathroom, vacuumed the carpet, and washed and folded a bunch of clothes. "Obsoletely Fabulous," and episode of Futurama that I have never seen. Yay for new Futurama to me! | ||||
| 2007-01-11 15:41:49 743 I ran my three mile loop (Montgomery to Main to Jackson to Womack and back to the apartment) in a whole 23:41, my fastest ever to manage to do it in less than 8 minute miles! Seven work days in 2007 so far and I have taken the bike every one of them for a total of seventy-three miles of commuting and errands. With fifteen miles of running, I will break a hundred miles of self powered transportation tomorrow. Hank Hill is an Eagle Scout too. Yay for Eagle Scouts! | ||||
| 2007-01-07 16:48:03 742 BIN612, advertising your food through the healthy television as fresh and healthy. What a lie. As fresh meaning it is hot? Healthy as "it has a crap load of olive oil in it and the Europeans are healthy so our stuff must be good for you too?" Put some calories on your menu if the food is healthy. | ||||
| 2007-01-03 18:25:11 741 That last post was a killer to write. Felt like doing something literary. Kinda. So now here is some potpourri. Last night I went over to Steve's. He invited me for sloppy joes. Invite me for anything involving ground beef and I am so there (Emily hates ground meat, bad texture or something.) So I went over in the Camry (el bikeo was still brokeo) and his kids were so happy that I came over. I played a little GameCube with them. So then Princess Emily calls. "I'm hungry and the cafeteria is closed." So her and another nurse called the Grill and I had to leave Steve's to go pick the stuff up. Super Jim to save the day. Had to ride the race bike to work today. The bad thing about it is the speedometer which makes me ride harder because I was racing myself. Love my new office. We got our cubical walls today. They suck. I cannot see Steve anymore unless I stand up. After work I ran six miles. That's right, six entire miles. Actually it is more than six miles, but due to rounding errors the gmap pedometer is a little short of the distance. The route is: run up Montgomery from the apt, turn toward campus, after McArthur turn toward the Sanderson, go down the hill, turn right on the new sidewalk towards the ERC, get to 182, touch the post, and turn around. That makes 3.something miles. To make 6.something miles overall at a pace of a bit slower than nine minute miles. I think I could have made a better time, but our great Presidente has decreed that the university must save energy at the cost of lights on pedestrian paths during the holidays. Note to Doc, the University is open now and the lights are still off. Thanks for the safety. Drove to Columbus in the good ole Camry tonight to pick up some more wedding gifts from Belk. It cruises along without a problem doing 65 on 82. I don't like to push it more than that... Anyway I made it back with no problems. Cut up a chicken tonight. Coated it with Walker's Wood jerk seasoning. Going to grill it tomorrow and cook some rice and peas. | ||||
| 2007-01-03 16:49:40 740 A Tale of Two Vehicles My car. Somewhere near 17 years old now that it is 2007. Back in July 2005 the starter died in the lot behind McArthur. Russ had helped me install it, but it never worked quite right. I thought that the problem was in the signal wire to the solenoid in the starter. Anyway since then I have lived with my car only cranking 1/3 times, usually just getting to hear the solenoid click hard. By using a length of wire to ghetto jump from the battery to the signal cable, I could get the car to start. The week before Christmas, the Camry would not start even with the wire trick. I assumed bad starter of course. Took it to AutoZone, they tested it, it was under warranty, I got a new one for free. Installed it (getting a starter back into the hole is damned hard compared to getting it out) and ole Camry would not turn over. Jumped her off from the Accord and she cranked up. Turn on the headlights and the engine doesn't run so well. So now I am thinking that the alternator is shot so I try to remove it. Cannot figure out how to pull it out so I get pissed and put everything back together. A week later on New Year's Eve, I decide to pull the alternator out and I manage to brute force it out of its bracket. On New Year's Day I took it to AutoZone and it tested perfectly. Take the battery to be tested and it tests fine for load. Got back to the apartment and I went crazy with my multimeter. Turns out that there was some super resistance between the negative battery clamp and post. That is bad. The corrosion was a very light layer of haze so I missed it completely. Take the trusty Swiss Army knife to the post and the clamp to make everything silvery and pretty again. Put the clamp back on and Camry starts up just fine. But dies when I let it idle. Constantly. I know for a fact that there is no easy way to change the idle speed on a '90 Camry. I checked out my fixing book and got no ideas. Looking under the hood, I saw that the throttle cable goes right by the starter. I wiggled it around a bit and then got in for the test. Camry started up stronger than ever! So in the aftermath I feel dumb. 1.5 years with a bad starter and it took a corroded battery connection for me to figure it out. My bike. My commuter bike that is. The sweet late '70's Raleigh frame tied to some other ancient hardware. The rear wheel has always been a bit out of true since I built it last July with its crazy twisty spoke pattern. I decided to try and true it up a bit more and managed to extend a spoke through the tube and blew it. That made me sad. And pissed. So I took apart the wheel and went for another spoke pattern, double twisting each spoke pair to reduce their length even more. It looked beautiful when I finished with it and I was able to get it decently true. The truth came out when I put it on the bike, double twisting spokes takes out all of the lateral strength. It was wonderful up and down, but put any sideways stress on the wheel (like taking a turn) and the wheel would bend into the frame. Not so good. So then I relaced it with a single twist W pattern. Looked pretty neat. Then I tried to true it. I learned that that pattern did not give exactly even tension around the wheel. I managed to pull the wheel so far out of true that it went more than an inch to each direction as you went around. Bad bad bad. I unlaced it completely. On a whim I laced it with my old Sapim Race Spokes (the ones from my racing wheel that I had laced to my old 7-speed hub) with a double cross pattern. Turns out there was too much slack. So I went back to the twisty method and twisted each spoke pair together. That was last night. So today the commuter bike was dead and I rode the race bike to work. It was fun going 33 down the Montgomery Street hill. Anyway I spent a little while tonight truing my newly laced wheel. I put it on the bike and trued it up some more. Went on a test ride through the parking lot fully expecting a load of creaking and popping. It was completely silent. I sprinted back and forth up and down the parking lot and there were no creaks. Yay for somewhat kinda flaky wheelbuilding! Well the real test will come tomorrow if it lives until I get to campus... Two vehicles, a gas burning one and a carbohydrate burning one, broken during the Christmas break and fixed soon after. Hopefully this will not make me want to drive more now that my car doesn't suck as much. | ||||
| 2006-12-29 16:48:53 739 So I had some habaneros in the refrigerator that were getting a little old. I decided to try to make a dried version before they were too old. After removing the seeds from them, I put them in the toaster oven and in about 30 minutes they looked dry enough. Ran them through the food processor and made the hottest pepper dust ever. I used a brush to get it all out into an airtight container. Even though I took so much care in washing my hands every time I touched something hot, I still managed to get some in my eye. Ran my head under the faucet for a bit. Now my right thumb is on fire and it tastes spicy. Yay for spicy thumbs! Anyway I found a nice list of spicy recipes here including some jerked chicken and rice and peas that I haven't had since the honeymoon. This is the first post to be made on my new server, Steve. Of course Steve is running Gentoo. I just got Apache, MySQL, and PHP5 up and going and figured out how to re import the dump of my database. Steve isn't even live on the Internets yet until I change some port forwarding on the router. | ||||
| 2006-12-25 15:11:21 738 Yesterday for Christmas Eve I cooked Steak au Poivre. It turned out pretty good even though I did not have any cognac to deglaze with. I used rum as a substitute and it made some awesome high flames. We had baked potatoes, crescent rolls, and steamed broccoli and carrots as sides. Today I made stuffed Cornish hens. I didn't use the exact same stuffing as I did with the turkey last year. I put celery and parsley into it and it turned out great. We had butter beans and cornbread too. Everything got done just in time for Emily to eat and then leave me for work so that I could do dishes on Christmas Day. | ||||
| 2006-12-24 23:16:53 737 Moving to Etheredge from Lee has made my commute just a little longer every day. Now it is a whole 2.7 miles according to the gmap pedometer. Emily and I drove to Birmingham with the intention on meeting her parents for lunch after they got back to the airport from their vacation. Their plane was going to be really late but we decided to make the trip anyway. We went to a few stores north of the Galleria looking for more kitchen stuff. Spent so long in the Galleria that Emily was shopped out and I was nearly dead. We headed to the Summit and found out that her parents were going to head straight to Starkville. Ate at P.F. Changs it was pretty good. Just like a Macaroni Grill but with Chinese food. After that we went to the Bruno's there that is the best grocery store ever and loaded up. | ||||
| 2006-12-22 21:40:58 736 Well I had several official tasks for tonight. The biggest was to stamp and seal the many thank you notes that sweet Emily had written. At least I had sealed the ones I had written so I just had to put stamps on them. Then I spend a good long while being really productive sharpening my axe and pocketknife. | ||||
| 2006-12-21 19:06:55 735 iTunes downloads for today: 1. That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! - Sufjan Stevans, free holiday song, a nice acoustic sounding mellow tune, almost Donovanesque 2. Stille Nacht - The King's Singers, free holiday song, Silent Night in German (I think), like vocal crossed with some sort of electronic mixing, maybe they just sing that way... 3. Other People's Lives - Modest Mouse, in cleaning up my home directory on bill, I came across a text file of good music that I had heard on radio wazee meaning to download later, this is one of those songs 4. Unseen Power of the Picket Fence - Pavement, another from the forgotten text file, this song rocks in an awesome 1994 way 5. Pandemonium - Killing Joke, also from the text file, a rocking song, almost sounds like some of Stabbing Westward | ||||
| 2006-12-19 22:09:35 734 I have found my newest favorite website which has a post, The -693926 Days of Christmas that has made me laugh out loud. All by myself. | ||||
| 2006-12-19 20:54:51 733 Stupid Starkville electric and their crappy electrical service. Apparently blinked good enough this weekend to kill the clocks and poor ole Bill. David got married to Deborah on Sunday. Emily and I got up and on the road around 11:00 Saturday morning. Took the Winona/Memphis/Little Rock route thinking it would be fast. Had some problems in Memphis making the westward turn because a cop was kinda blocking the off ramp and they had orange cones everywhere. Had to loop around and go at it for a second time. I-40 between Memphis and Little Rock is the busiest stretch of interstate that I have had the pleasure of driving on. We had the bright idea of going to the mall in Little Rock not thinking that it was the last real Saturday before Christmas. The traffic there was fun too. Got back on the road and made it to the Hampton Inn in Caddo where my parents were staying; the same hotel that Cory, Sarah, and I had stayed at for the Degray tri last August. Went to Cracker Barrel with my parents, the couple to be married, and some of Deb's family. Afterward several of us went back to David and Deb's apartment. They have gotten the best little Shitzu ever. I don't even like dogs that much but I wanted to kidnap that one. After a while Emily and I went back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. On Sunday morning Emily and I went down for breakfast; me in suit pants and a dress shirt and her in pink pajamas. Mom was down there and we ate with her. She told us a funny story that David had been trying to open a box of raisin bran earlier in the morning and managed to rip it that it exploded across most of the dining area. So of course Emily and I wanted to throw raisin bran at the newlywed couple. David met me pretty soon after and him and I headed to the gardens in the Accord. The place was really nice. Nice and natural. Had the neatest Arkansas stone sidewalks that were nearly perfectly level and smooth. Anyway the hardest thing I had to do was set up a projector and screen to show the kids' photos during the reception. Was tough because the projector was way too big for the screen. Anyway the ceremony went very well with one little omission but it was not really noticed by anyone but the maid of honor and me. I think this is the first ceremony that I have ever attended with a woman officiating. The reception was neat too. David's groom's cake was so good. Almost as good as mine. They had a bottle of champagne and the opening duties were assigned to me. Some bright soul had put the bottle into the freezer since before the ceremony. I opened it without much of a pop, but then the ice dam broke and a frozen slurry slammed up into me and to the ceiling. Good times. Well Emily and I left and both of us were starving and she really wanted a steak. I got back to the interstate in Benton and saw a place called Colton's off of the road. It was one of the best restaurant experiences we have ever had; we were starving so the food tasted better than it might have been, but the service was excellent also. We continued back toward home and made pretty good time. Saw lots of deer on 55 and 82 though and that was scary. We went to my least favorite store once we got back in Starkville and picked up a nice on sale fake Christmas tree. Finally made it home around 10:00 PM and got some much needed sleep. | ||||
| 2006-12-15 20:57:02 732 Obama? Wow that sounds like Osama! And he dresses like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! Crazy crazy! Go go stock market! My IRA is up more than 2% in the past 30 days. I am mostly invested in the S&P 500 and a mid-cap index fund so if the market tanks I am screwed. Stupid businesses giving there CEO's $40M bonuses keeps that keep good ole wealth concentration keeping on. Something has got to give, and when it does things are going to get really really bad. IRA is going to go to poop. Maybe I should buy me some gold. | ||||
| 2006-12-14 14:44:05 731 The Knife - Christmas Reindeer is the neatest "modern" Christmas song I have heard this year and it is free on iTunes. Sounds like some crazy people with a beat box and a synth. | ||||
| 2006-12-10 21:12:55 730 Now I have been 25 for almost a whole day now. Last year when I turned 24 I was talking about an IRA. Now I have a Roth. And I am married. Best thing I know about turning 25 is that society finally sees me as an adult and will let me rent cars at the cheap insurance rates. | ||||
| 2006-12-05 00:05:50 729 The one reason I like the cold on the bike... apparently it makes everything so tight that I get no squeakies from the back wheel or anywhere else. Good ole thickening powers of grease. Tonight the Raleigh is inside so it will suffer some temp shock in the morning and I may get some serious temperature squealing. | ||||
| 2006-12-04 23:16:09 728 Coldest day of the year so far. According to weather.gov it was about 23 when I left this morning on the bike for campus. I made it ok, my ears just hurt really really bad. Rode back home for lunch and the ears hurt again. Luckily by then Emily had found her earwarmer and got it out for me. The rides this afternoon were much nicer. Tonight at ~10:30 it was back down to 25. I rode over to the hospital and got Emily's car and drove it for a few miles to warm it up. Now it is a little after 11 so she should be getting home soon. Hopefully her car stayed warm. I can't wait for the ride in the morning, it should be my first sub 20 ride. Last January or so I had a few 25 degree rides but I do not remember it getting nearly this cold. | ||||
| 2006-12-02 21:36:21 727 This will be a long long post. The Abbey. In Starkville. Worse than the Olive Garden in Jackson back in '01. Worse than Rosey Baby's legendary terrible service (or maybe just my terrible luck). I went to the Abbey once and it was not too bad except for the crappy food. A couple weeks later, Scott planned to have our chapter's fall 2005 alumni even there. And the service was absolutely terrible. Fast forward a year and search for "the abbey sucks" on my most favorite $400+ a share search engine. sesser.net rocks out as #1 in that search. Fast forward to the year 2006. In October. Nearly a year since I wasted my money at the Abbey. I get an email from theabbeystrkvl@aol.com:
Welcome to America, where you express an opinion of a place of business and the owner resorts to threatening email. Apparently he thought I was a girl because I had this place pink for October. My response:
Took three more days and I got this lengthy response:
I replied:
Thanks Mario, I am still never going back to the Abbey. The Abbey, the only place I won't eat in Starkville. Oh well, the Subway in Wal-Mart either because Wal-Mart is evil too. |
